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Topic: Save a beehive in the snow?? (Read 2904 times)

if you get the chance to be there when then open it, take it. seeing hives in their natural state is very helpful. you get a feel for what the bees do when they have their own way, and it will help you manage your own hives better.

Logged

.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

Well, no excitement at all. The entrance hole to the hive was on the bottom of the log so I had to lay on my back to look into it. Not one bee. Not even any dead ones. The log is about 10 feet long and I have no way of telling how deep it's hollowed out. There is more than one hole in the log so maybe the bees are farther in than I can see. The guys are going to haul it up with the horses and work on it with chain saws, but I don't know when they'll be able to do it. It looked to me like an animal may have gotton part of the hive. There seems to be lots of honey left, but there's really nothing I can do with a log 10 feet long and 3 feet across so I guess I'll wait and see when they cut it open. It's was still a nice walk in the woods and the Amish girls were trying to teach me how to say "What a Bummer" in Amish Dutch......Maybe next time.....Thank you all for you help....Julie!~

When you mentioned the bees were bearding on the exterior of the tree in frigid temperatures my first thought was that some animal had entered and disrupted the colony, now it makes sense.

Julie, a ten foot section is pretty big, you would want to find the winter cluster if you could and cut that section of the tree out. Sounds like this would be a real challenge being the tree is so far from where you live.

You know when it warms sufficiently, if the bees survive, they will most likely swarm out and relocate. You could keep tabs on things with the owners and at the very least you could put out a swarm trap or two and perhaps catch a swarm from this colony.

They're going to call me when they haul the log up. They're Amish and I thought they'd use the horses to bring it up, but I talked to them tonight and they'll use the Crawler. (dozer with forks on the front and a wench on the back) It's down in a gully 20-30 ft but they're operating a saw mill in the woods so they say it's no big deal to drag it up the bank and use the fork to haul it up to the house. He'll just start cutting small slices off one end of the log until we can see something. They're really very interested in doing it, but they're cutting pallet lumber which is about their only income right now so they can't stop to play with the bees. We can't tip it upright, it's in the way of other trees they're hauling. As the log lays now, there's a small entrance hole the size of a half dollar on the top. That's where he claimed he saw the bees. But there's a larger baseball size hole on the bottom of the log where the honey is dripping out. This larger hole is three feet away from the small hole. We thought maybe it would help to roll the log so the holes were on opposite sides instead of top and bottom. I don't know???? I'm almost sure an animal got to it. And the bees are probably gone. It just seems soooo cold for them to be flying around. I will say though beech trees tend to be hollow so they've got plenty of hollow logs to move into if they did take flight. Thanks for all your help. I'll let you know when we can cut into it. Now, I'll go do some studying on swarm traps....Yep, I'm really, really new to this ! Thanks again everyone...Julie~